Now that all clubs are preparing their selection for the coming season, an exciting time has come for Denis Mahmudov. The 31-year-old goalkeeper had to leave Siena in Italy in March and would like to return to the Dutch fields after two rather bizarre adventures abroad. “I am sure that I would score ten, fifteen times for every team in the Kitchen Champion Division.”
By Thijs Verhaar
The experienced attacker is not lacking in self-confidence and neither is self-mockery. He laughs it off when his long list of thirteen clubs is read. “I am indeed often looking for a new adventure. That’s just the way I am and I also like to see some of the world, but the truth is that in recent years I certainly had no intention of leaving any time soon, ”says Mahmudov. “In football you just have to have a little luck and luck has not been on my side in recent years. I have experienced many strange things in the past two years ”, said the former player of AGOVV, WHC Wezep, Excelsior ’31, PEC Zwolle, Sparta Rotterdam, Levski Sofia, Banants, Telstar, FC Dordrecht, Excelsior, Pyunik Erewan, KSV Roeselare and most recently Siena.
When asked what is the strangest thing he has experienced since July 27, 2019, he is not sure what to choose. So he just starts telling. Mahmudov had just had a mediocre year with Excelsior in the Eredivisie in which he did not get much playing time and could therefore do little to avert relegation. “Yet FC Emmen really wanted to have me and I wanted to prove myself that I could handle the highest level, but the clubs did not come out. Excelsior wanted a transfer fee that Emmen did not want to pay, so I had no other option than to go abroad. With Pyunik from Armenia I was able to play the Europa League preliminary round and suddenly I was on the field against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Lost without a chance, of course, but I did play well in England against a club from the Premier League. ”
Mahmudov in Pyunik’s shirt against Wolverhampton Wanderers.
That is a special step after Eredivisie relegation, but not a very strange story, right?
“It was not surprising indeed. That only came afterwards. Armenia is easy to do. There are quite a lot of Dutch boys playing there because everything is well organized. You can earn a lot of money, so I was in the right place. Do you understand? I also scored regularly and they were already talking about an extension. Only then did corona suddenly come into play. The competition was cut short, everything became uncertain and I didn’t want to be left alone in a foreign country. ”
So with Roeselare you opted for Belgian security and tranquility?
“I thought so, yes. Of course I knew that the club had been declared bankrupt before, but the owners showed me in every way that there was now a good plan and enough money behind the restart. It was just a nice story and the point is that you don’t expect crazy ghost stories and things like fake contracts in Belgium. Really. I have never had any problems in distant Eastern Bloc countries and that is when things go horribly wrong in Belgium. ”
Fake contracts… What do I have to imagine?
“Well, luckily mine was real and signed by the chairman, but many other guys from abroad were presented with a nice contract and counted themselves rich, but later it turned out that the man who signed on behalf of the club was not officially part of the management at all. . So his scratch was worthless and they didn’t have a leg to stand on when the bubble burst. ”
Roeselare was finally declared bankrupt within two months of your arrival. From when did you feel wet?
“When the hotel manager came to me and told me that there was an invoice for thousands of euros open. All foreign boys slept in hotel rooms that would be paid for by the club, but that turned out not to be the case. Then I thought: What is happening here? Each time I got a new explanation from the management and they promised to improve, but at a certain point you don’t believe it anymore. Dennis de Nooijer was the assistant trainer at the time and he has never experienced so much chaos anywhere. I don’t wish something like that for anyone. ”
Because Mahmudov did have a legally valid contract, he receives an amount from a Belgian solidarity fund to partly compensate the financial damage suffered. “If all goes well, I will receive that at the end of the year. So I don’t have to worry about that, but I do feel sorry for the guys who didn’t have a good contract ”, it sounds softly. “They get nothing. I just hope that by now they have all found a new club that will take good care of them ”, said the striker, who himself did not have to wait long for a new employer. After that bizarre experience, he was not afraid to embark on a new foreign adventure and decided to accept an offer from Siena, which in recent years has dropped from Serie A to Serie D and is brooding on a resurgence there.
Although the presence of the Italian world champion and Champions League winner Alberto Gilardino as a trainer appealed to him directly, he decided to have an investigation into the background of the ambitious owners first. That turned out to be in order in this case and because the club had already attracted a few players from higher divisions in the previous season, Mahmudov was happy to sign a multi-year contract. “The trainer said he would like to have me and the group of players was also eager to promote to Serie C. After that, the board wanted to move on to Serie B within two years, so I could already imagine how I could see the final days of the game. my career could take off in a beautiful country and in a good competition. ”
World champion Alberto Gilardino was good for 188 goals in Serie A as a striker.
Yet it turned out differently …
“Yes, unbelievable. Everything went well and we were first, but then the owner suddenly had had enough. I didn’t see that coming and immediately thought: oh, here we go again. Gilardino was fired, some trainer from Latvia came and we lost everything under his leadership. The chairman resigned and his successor immediately decided to send the foreign players away, so I could also leave. ”
That was another big setback, but it was cool that you could work with Gilardino.
“Do you know what is the best? They have now brought him back as a trainer. I think it’s a top game and I hope he will still be promoted, but it will be difficult now that they have gotten rid of many of their better players. In any case, I learned a lot from him in those few months and saw up close how much quality he still has. When he participated in finishing exercises, everything went right. Always.”
You yourself were less on shot with a goal in eight games.
“That’s right. It just wasn’t my type of football either. In Serie C and B it is fine to do, but at the fourth level it is only fighting dude. Always hassle, nothing for me. But I had the big picture in mind and counted on those promotions. Then it could have become really beautiful. But again: as a football player you also have to be lucky. ”
You haven’t had that a few times in a row now. What are you most fed up with?
“That I now have to start from scratch. I have already proven a number of times that I can score my goals and be of value to a club, but too often the next step was not good after that. Partly due to bad luck and certainly also due to my own choices. It would be great if the penny fell the other way in the coming years. ”
Mahmudov therefore hopes with all his heart that he will be able to join a club from the Kitchen Champion Division in preparation for the new season. No more hassle, just play football. “Since March I have trained properly for myself every day and I really want to spend my last years as a professional in the Netherlands.” The Rotterdammer, who can be deployed as a striker as well as a right or left winger, only fears that he has ‘disappeared a bit from the radar’ due to his adventures abroad. His mediocre statistics at Siena are of course also not in his favor. Yet he has by no means forgotten how to score, he assures. “When I returned to the Netherlands after Levski Sofia and Banants, I scored enough goals at Telstar and FC Dordrecht and I have also been a club top scorer at Sparta. Dutch football suits me and I am sure that I would score at least ten or fifteen times with every team. Just write that I make that promise to every club in the Kitchen Champion Division that offers me the opportunity. ”